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Diablo 3 tops sales charts for May

The games market went to Hell in May. Diablo III topping software sales for the month, according to the latest sales figures from NPD, and helped fuel a resurgence in the PC games space.

The games market went to Hell in May. Diablo III topping retail software sales for the month, according to the latest sales figures from NPD, and helped fuel a resurgence in the PC games space. Other top performers included Max Payne 3, which launched the same day as Diablo III, as well as Sniper Elite V2 and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.
While action titles continued their dominance of the top 10, 2K Sports' NBA 2K12 held the fifth spot for the second straight week.
Blizzard continued to show its impact in the PC market with Diablo III at number 1, the first time since July 2010 that a PC-only title has accomplished that feat. The game that did it in 2010? StarCraft 2, another Blizzard mainstay.

Max Payne 3's bullet time couldn't overcome the Prime Evil

Total video game sales continued to shrink, down 28 percent from last year. However, the PC market jumped 230 percent from the same time last year to $80 million, fueled by Diablo III sales. The overall spend in May, including digital sales and microtransactions was estimated to be $1.17 billion.
Here is the full list:
Top 10 Games (New Physical Retail only; across all platforms including PC)

Diablo III (PC)

Max Payne 3 (360, PS3, PC)

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier (360, PS3)

Prototype 2 (360, PS3)

NBA 2K12 (360, PS3, Wii, PSP, PS2, PC)

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (360, PS3, Wii, PC)

Sniper Elite V2 (360, PS3)

Battlefield 3 (360, PS3, PC)

Dragon's Dogma (360, PS3)

Just Dance 3 (Wii, 360, PS3)

Major titles that have dropped off the list from last month include Mass Effect 3, Kinect Star Wars and The Witcher 2.

John Keefer

Contributing Editor

John Keefer is a curmudgeon that has been in journalism for 35 years, the last 16 in the video games industry. He loves real-time strategy games and prefers old-school Total Annihilation to StarCraft. He also loves isometric RPGs, and has been addicted to World of Warcraft for more than 10 years. He sucks at shooters and multiplayer and is purely a PC guy. And being a former member of Shack, he also likes Chatty. Go figure.